Tribe 06

PORTFOLIO Images - Courtesy of Ahmad Mrowat Collection. Writer - Kevin Jones, independent arts writer.

Karimeh Abbud: A legacy The first Palestinian woman photographer On the surface, it’s a stirring success story of a

say for sure who is who? Does one landscape denote

pioneering woman. In 1932 Palestine, against the

Abbud’s eye more than another? What ciphers must

backdrop of the British Mandate, an enterprising

we conjure to ascertain authorship?

young photographer, Karimeh Abbud (1893-1940), placed an ad in Al-Karmil newspaper trumpeting her

Loss, that Palestinian constant, taints this story as well

unique value proposition—“the only national female

as countless others. ‘The Nakba was a catastrophe

photographer in Palestine”—playing at once into the

in every sense of the word,’ confides Reverend Mitri

growing nationalist (read: non-sectarian) label, as well

Raheb, Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in

as promoting her gendered agility to photograph

Bethlehem (where Abbud’s father himself was at the

women in their own homes. A canny self-marketer,

spiritual helm for some 50 years), in Mahasen Nasser-

Abbud stamped her postcard-format prints with the

Eldin’s documentary biopic of Abbud, Restored

embossed moniker “Lady Photographer” in both

Pictures (2012). ‘We lost the land,’ he continues.

English and Arabic. Today, she is largely recognized

‘We lost the narrative. And we lost everything that

as the first Palestinian (or Arab) woman to have set

had taken shape and place during the preceding

up her own photographic studio, and to have worked

decades.’

consistently in a field dominated, at the time, by men.

Yet this is precisely what Abbud retrieves for us— But it is also a tale of mystery and loss. The archive

an anthology of accumulated life processes that

is enigmatic. This wellspring—from which was

constituted the quotidian in early 20th century

drawn the first comprehensive exhibition of Abbud’s

Palestine. Abbud was not just (inadvertently)

works at Amman’s Darat al-Funun (18 May to 24

documenting some familial inner sanctum, but

Karimeh Abbud, Studio C. Sawides, Haifa, Palestine.

September 2017)—only surfaced in 2006. In that

indeed an entire social class. And beyond: when she

sculpted wooden door complete with hand-shaped

year, an Israeli antiquarian named Boki Boazz, who

ventures out into the world, her images seem almost

knocker. Elsewhere, a pair of stony-faced siblings

had allegedly acquired a collection of some 400

contemporary—of “now,” but somehow glistening

in traditional headgear, a fidgety tomboy freeze-

(mostly) signed photographs from a house in the

with a residue of “then.”

framed in a sculpted armchair, or a dapper youngster

Qatamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, sold his

104 tribe

perched next to a telephone, offer testament to a

stockpile to researcher Ahmad Mrowat, director of

The portraits are as moving as they are revealing.

world of privileged self-consciousness.

the Nazareth Research Project, who folded it into his

Unsurprisingly, children and women abound. A

own fledgling trove.

sage-smiling, black-clad girl, her hand-held doll,

The many women’s portraits provide initial glimpses

floor-bound hobbyhorse and crouching toy dog

of Abbud’s hefty, almost man-like cousin Mateel, a

Yet the archive is contaminated: it contains images by

creating a ludic triangulation, stares at the camera,

photographic fetish threading throughout the entire

Abbud, but also those she collected, or others still,

at once complicit and defiant. A booted young boy,

archive, even into the most experimental hand-color-

of hazy provenance, that lingered in family albums.

wearing a tartan-patterned trench coat and matching

variation works (Abbud tints her cousin’s dress in

How, then, to separate fact from conjecture? Can we

pointed hat, reigns as a mini-maître des lieux before a

peach and turquoise in one series). A single self-